Almost age 2, Dodd-Frank is still learning to crawl

The Dodd-Frank financial reform law will celebrate its second birthday later this month, but many of its key provisions remain stalled amid fierce attacks from Wall Street and congressional Republicans.

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The struggle to implement Dodd-Frank is playing out across numerous regulators, including the Federal Reserve, the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.

The law leaves it up to these agencies to finalize the details of the broad policies President Barack Obama and congressional Democrats put in place through the law.

The decision to defer to regulators was a matter of necessity, Frank said, as writing them directly into the law would make it too rigid and prone to mistakes that could only be fixed at the pace of Congress.

“You’ve got to have flexibility there to update the rules as things evolve,” said Frank, who is retiring from Congress this year.

But by leaving the law flexible, its authors opened the door to continued lobbying from industry groups as they work to bend regulators’ interpretation of the law to their preferences.

The lobbying has taken a toll on the agencies: The law firm Davis Polk calculated this month that regulators have met 37 percent of the 221 Dodd-Frank rule-making deadlines that so far have passed.

Among the policies banks have sought to delay is the “Volcker rule,” which aims to stop Wall Street giants from making risky trades with their own funds. It was supposed to be finished later this month, but regulators say they’ll miss that deadline.

The law failed to streamline Washington’s regulatory apparatus contributing to delays as multiple agencies have to agree on final rules.

Frank said, for instance, that he wanted to consolidate the SEC and CFTC, but he lacked the votes because the farm lobby’s congressional allies were eager to maintain the CFTC’s historical role overseeing agricultural commodities.

“There’s distrust on the part of agriculture people of city slickers and the stock exchanges,” he said.

­—Patrick Reis

Wall Street POLITICO is a weekly column looking at issues that drive business.

The Frodd (Frank-Dodd) Act was a joke from the beginning. It was designed to "crawl" without seriously curtailing any of the major abuses on Wall St.

There are existing laws against mortgage fraud, securities fraud, forgery, perjury, etc. Despite well documented evidence of these crimes, there have been few, if any prosecutions. The problem is NOT a lack of regulation. It is failure to enforce existing regulation. The federal government has given the financial elites a free pass to plunder the U.S. economy.

No amount of regulation matters when the people charged with enforcing it are the past and future employees of the firms they are supposed to regulate.

Everyone should speak to a small business owner. More than any bill out of Congress in the last fourteen years, this Bill has been the most helpful to small businesses allowing us to keep more of our transaction revenues when we use debit or credit cards. Wall St , banks, repubs, and their donors are waging a war against small businesses directly when they take aim at this Bill.

Frodd (Frank-Dodd) Act was a joke from the beginning. It was designed to "crawl" without seriously curtailing any of the major abuses on Wall St.

There are existing laws against mortgage fraud, securities fraud, forgery, perjury, etc. Despite well documented evidence of these crimes, there have been few, if any prosecutions. The problem is NOT a lack of regulation. It is failure to enforce existing regulation. The federal government has given the financial elites a free pass to plunder the U.S. economy.

No amount of regulation matters when the people charged with enforcing it are the past and future employees of the firms they are supposed to regulate.

Really...and they really worked well.......evidently for forgot about the credit swaps, dirivitive swaps, hedge fund large scale betting schemes which ultimately led to the housing/financial meltdown that we are still crawling our way out of.......maybe you like it....maybe you didn't loose anything on you 401K/Retirement investments.........maybe you forgot you did.......

Either way Wall Street and the financial secotr have proven without a doubt they cannot be trusted with other people's money/retirement. Thye need rules to live by...like the rest of us.....

IF THE OPPONETS OF DODD-FRANK....FEEL THAT WE SHOULD RETURN....TO THE PREVIOUS TIMES....AND NOT LONG AGO....OF LAIZE-FAIRE....OVERSIGHT....REGULATIONS....WITH WHATEVER....YOUR REASONING.....COULD BE.....WELL....ITS NOT SHAME ON YOU...(THE ENABLERS OF THOSE TIMES)....IT'S SHAME ON....US....SOME THINGS...WE AS A PEOPLE....SHOULD...NOT TOLERATE...BE IT...WHATEVER SIDE OF THE DIVIDE.....WE ARE ON.....

Are federal banking and market regulators part of the problem, or part of the solution. Wall Street business practices continue to undermine confidence in the capital markets that is key to job creation and economic growth.

Here's your chance to tell Congress to step up oversight of all federal banking and market regulators to enforce fair and equitable capital markets:http://www.change.org/petition...

“All that is required for evil to prevail is for good men to do nothing," Edmund Burke.